Jan 26, 2018

THE MERMAID AND MRS HANCOCK - Imogen Hermes Gowar

The first task after reading the manuscript was to collect research on typography, fonts, printed matter, fashion and fabrics. Referencing eighteenth-century lettering helped develop the title and author font. The first sketches by the lettering artist can be seen above as well as the finished title.  The way the ‘and’ has been rendered is of particular note.

The objective was always to present a whole design package with this title. The novel was set in Caslon, a popular font in the mid 1700s and the title page was designed to echo the title page of Clarissa. In keeping with the time period the book is set in, an eighteenth-century Harvill Secker logo was created for the cover. The bird was silhouetted from an engraving found in the book Old English Cuts and Illustrations.

Hinting at the narrative, the eighteenth-century pale blue silk shown above is incorporated into the cover design. Anna Maria Garthwaite, a celebrated textile designer of the eighteenth century, designed the silk pattern. Anna lived at the very heart of the silk industry in Spitalfields, where she produced over one thousand patterns for damasks and brocades. The silk is suggestive of waves and was discovered during a research trip to the Eighteenth Century Galleries at the V&A.

Layering two eighteenth-century silks created the background of the cover. The mermaid’s tail was then worked into this repeated pattern. The tail was created from the author’s research on mermaids, collected while she was writing the novel.

The shells reference the fashionable eighteenth-century shell grottoes that feature in the novel. They neatly appear within the text design too.

Published by Harvill Secker

Jan 19, 2018

THE MERMAID AND MRS HANCOCK - Imogen Hermes Gowar

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is a spellbinding story of curiosity and obsession. Set in 1785, the novel opens with merchant Jonah Hancock, selling his ship for a mermaid. His ownership of the novelty creature opens the doors to high society and brings Jonah into the thrilling orbit of Angelica Neal, the most glorious courtesan in London.

Come back next week to see how the cover was designed.

Out on the 25th January published by Harvill Secker

Jan 18, 2018

Dystopian Trilogy

George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World join Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to complete our dystopian trilogy of books featuring the designs of Noma Bar.

All three books are out now.

Jan 16, 2018

THE ONLY STORY - Julian Barnes

‘Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.’

The Only Story, set in 1963, in and around London. Paul, the narrator is 19. He meets Mrs Susan MacLeod, when they become tennis partners at the local surburban tennis club. A relationship develops that lasts for 10-12 years.

Several themes in response to lines within the novel were worked up (shown above).

Paul kept a hardback notebook for decades in which he wrote what people said about love. He assembeled the evidence, then went through it, and crossed out all the quotations he no longer believed to be true. One phrase, ‘It is better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all’ is crossed out, only to be rewritten by Paul. This idea developed as a possible cover approach, but having the title appear twice on the cover, is inheritably complicated and the design needed to feel natural. It required a lot of thought to achieve this.

When Susan finds the notebook she writes…‘with your inky pen to make you hate me’. This helped evolve the cover further, and the smudges and waterstains also convey mood and narrative. The back cover uses the quote that inspired the cover design. The main edition was set against a Basildon Bond blue.

Published on 1st February by Jonathan Cape

For the full design story…

Keep reading

Jan 5, 2018
T-Singer / Armand V - Dag Solstad
Dark humour. Existential angst. Rebellion and morality. Dag Solstad never fails to entertain.
For new titles T-Singer and Armand V we utilised these striking images by Norwegian photographer Erland Mikael Saeverund...

T-Singer / Armand V - Dag Solstad

Dark humour. Existential angst. Rebellion and morality. Dag Solstad never fails to entertain.

For new titles T-Singer and Armand V we utilised these striking images by Norwegian photographer Erland Mikael Saeverund which capture the Solstadian spirit perfectly.

Both are published in May.

Dec 21, 2017
CMYK’s Favourite Book Covers of 2017

CMYK’s Favourite Book Covers of 2017

Dec 7, 2017
DIARY OF AN ORDINARY SCHOOLGIRL - Margaret Forster
December 7th 1954
Much colder day & very frosty & foggy at first. Bitterly cold going down on a bike. Joan Scott got to know that she has got an interview tomorrow at [Cambridge deleted] Oxford!!...

DIARY OF AN ORDINARY SCHOOLGIRL - Margaret Forster

December 7th 1954

Much colder day & very frosty & foggy at first. Bitterly cold going down on a bike. Joan Scott got to know that she has got an interview tomorrow at [Cambridge deleted] Oxford!! She’s on top of the world (it gives me a thrill just to write the name – Cambridge!) But poor old Mary hasn’t heard anything – I think shes wizard. Tried out for readings for the nativity play. Had amusing dinnertime with my table UIVs. Look forward to Tuesday.

In 1954 in Carlisle lived an ordinary 15-year-old schoolgirl called Margaret. She would go on to become an acclaimed writer, the author of novels Georgy Girl and Diary of an Ordinary Woman as well as biographies and memoirs. But this is her diary from that year; her life. Hers might be a lost world, but her daily observations bring it back in vivid, irresistible detail.

Published today by Chatto and Windus, the book includes photographs as well as facimile pages from Margaret’s original diary. The book was designed, inside and out, by Anna Green.

Nov 17, 2017

ICEBREAKER – Horatio Clare

To celebrate Finland’s centenary, Horatio Clare was invited to travel on an Icebreaker ship on a nordic adventure through the ice-packs of the far north.

In this off-beat travelogue, Horatio explores Finland’s little-known history and character. He also comes to understand something of the complexity and fragile beauty of ice, a near-miraculous substance which cools the planet, gives the stars their twinkle and which may hold all our futures in its crystals.

The jacket and endpapers were illustrated by Eoin Ryan

Icebreaker is available now in hardback

Nov 17, 2017

DAWN OF THE NEW EVERYTHING - Jaron Lanier

We first spotted the work of Copenhagen-based Dane and digital artist Christian Zander, on But Does it Float. He produced a series of photographs experimenting in 3D with polar co-ordinates and gradient mapping. More of his work can be seen on his blog, houseandbike.com

Dawn of the New Everything is published by Bodley Head and is available now

Nov 15, 2017

CMYK CREATIVITY DAY

Last week the CMYK design team opened their doors to the whole of the Vintage division, running workshops for everyone to get involved with something creative. People had the chance to try thier hand at letterpress, cyanotype, linocut, wax resist and handlettering and some lovely artworks were taken away at the end of the day.

Nov 10, 2017

VINTAGE CLASSICS DICKENS SERIES

Charles Dickens is the mind behind some of the world’s best known fictional characters, with his books enjoying a lasting appeal up to this day. Vintage Books has brought together six of his works in a highly desirable collection for publication. Here, the designer explains the lead up to the creation of this new series:

‘Years ago I had bought a cushion featuring strange Victorian characters within a black and white pattern designed by Ellie Curtis, a printmaker and textile designer based in London. Her work is all beautifully handmade and screen-printed and I had long wanted to commission her. I started by researching Victorian patterns and labels and how Dickens had previously been portrayed.

Dickens excelled in the creation of characters, and they would be a vital component of the new series design. The idea was for Ellie to feature the characters within a “Victorian” pattern, inspired by that cushion. The palette was based on tones used in the original Dickens illustrations by Pollock. We intended from the start to add black smoky edges to the pages, framing the covers to evoke the grimy industrial age described by Dickens. The titles have been letterpress printed and are set within a consistent panel’.

Ellie Curtis is represented by Glory illustration.

Nov 3, 2017

FIRST PERSON - Richard Flanagan

First Person is a multi-layered novel with a foreboding atmosphere and full of imagery that provided inspiration for the cover. It is about writing, ghost-writing and the pressures of a deadline.

In the book, Kif calculates how many pages of the manuscript he has to complete each day to meet his deadline. The first visual shows a pile of pages with large gaps between each page. The looming shadow under each page is to indicate something sinister.

Mirroring and contrast is at play throughout the novel. Colour and tone, light and dark were used to reflect this. Heidl is compared to a wild dog and a monster. There is a scene in the novel, where a pet bird is caught within a dog’s mouth. The dog I painted has pointed ears and a sharp tail to suggest a devil.

Kif describes writing Heidl’s biography as a dance with evil, “I was his subject not he mine.” Kif was playing with evil, he was warned that Heidl would want his soul. I used the icon of a devil and played with the idea of crossing out the title to reference Heidl’s multiple personalities.

A black jay appears, circling and spiraling above both Heidl and Kif at siginificant moments during the novel. It seemed an important icon. I had asked the illustrator Jimmy Turrell to screen print a moving bird. I placed, what came to be nicknamed the ghost bird, against a painted background. It had a great atmosphere that echoed the building tension in the novel.

The author and his Publisher chose this route for the final cover

First Person is published by Chatto & Windus and is available now

Nov 3, 2017

JAMES BOND - Ian Fleming

With striking cover designs illustrated by Levente Szabo, Ian Fleming’s most-loved James Bond books are now available from Vintage Classics. Levente has also created individual endpapers for each of these new editions, which we are thrilled to share.

You can find out more about these new editions on the Ian Fleming website

Nov 2, 2017

ANIMALS STRIKE CURIOUS POSES - Elena Passarello

For this beautiful little book of sixteen essays, each investigating a different famous animal named and immortalised by humans, we commissioned Clare Lewis to illustrate each chapter page. Within its pages we see the starling that inspired Mozart with its song, Darwin’s tortoise Harriet, and Jumbo the elephant (and how they tried to electrocute him). Modelled loosely on a medieval bestiary, these witty, playful, provocative essays traverse history, myth, science and more.

Clare also reproduced many of the characters for the jacket design, adding colour to her strong, bold linoprint illustrations. We asked Clare about her feelings on this, her first book illustration commission:

“Black and white illustrations were not something I’d previously worked on or explored before so I was initially daunted by the concept – but excited nonetheless! To create depth and an environment without colour I found it best to create a layered effect, reaching into the distance around the animal, with varying shades of grey. All of the animals were hand-carved into lino to create a print, which was then scanned and then used to digitally create the entire page. I lean towards natural content when creating my own work so I found that these illustrations began to flow quite quickly and I’m overjoyed to see my first book artworks published!”

You can see more of Clare’s work on her website and instagram.

Oct 31, 2017

CLASSIC GHOST STORIES

The great writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Rudyard Kipling, also produced some of the most influential ghost stories ever written, shaping the conventions of the genre for generations of writers to follow. Collected here are some of the most iconic of these Victorian ghost stories, from Charles Dickens’s ‘The Signalman’ to M.R. James’s 'A Warning to the Curious’, alongside more unexpected contributions from masters of the form such as J.S. Le Fanu and H.G. Wells.

The jacket and endpapers are illustrated by Ed Kluz.

Classic Ghost Stories is available now in hardback

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